Revered for its part it in creating and popularizing the tower heatsink paradigm,
the Japanese manufacturer Scythe has been neglecting the form recently. Scythe's
last big tower cooler, the Mugen-2,
impressed us greatly with its high performance and low price-tag, but it's been
more than a year since its debut and nothing has since has been released to
compliment it. There seems to be a large void in Scythe's lineup since the Ninja
series fell out of fashion, having been surpassed by a multitude of ambitious
newcomers. The release of two new tower heatsinks may remedy the situation,
but with the DIY market currently saturated with high performance PC coolers,
the Ninja 3 and Yasya really need to step up to be noticed.

Scythe Ninja 3

The newest scion of the legendary Ninja family retains a distinct resemblance
to the original; it is a big, uniform, symmetrical, block of aluminum fins.
Ninja 3 features an extra heatpipe on each side and two channels slicing up
the heatsink in the shape of an 'X' though small portions have been left intact
as bridges holding the four sections together. Its predecessor the Ninja
2 relied on stock mounting systems, but the Ninja 3 utilizes a bolt-thru
system with a padded backplate.

The Ninja 3 package.

Scythe heatsink stock fans have been consistently above par acoustically, and
tend to deliver good cooling in relation to the noise . However, to satisfy
more performance-oriented and less noise-conscious users, the Ninja 3 ships
with a relatively high speed Slip Stream PWM fan rated for 1900 RPM. On the
bright side, there's a manual fan speed controller attached.

Scythe Yasya

We're not even going to wager a guess at the origins of the name "Yasya"
but with no lineage to live up to the heatsink bearing its name is free to be
equally odd. In essence it is a traditional six heatpipe cooler but uses what
Scythe refers to as a "Trident Multi Layer Fin" structure. The faces
of the heatsink are very angular, with each fin resembling a jagged blade. This
unusual design reduces resistance but at the cost of total surface area. The
result is a menacing heatsink, not just in appearance. The Yasya is the most
physically hazardous CPU cooler we've come across since the Thermaltake
SpinQ and caution should be exercised when handling it.

Box contents: Scythe Yasya.

Compared to the Ninja 3 the Yasya is lighter and more slender. Though it's
not exactly a lightweight, Scythe deemed it appropriate for traditional Intel
pushpins and AMD spring-loaded tension clips. The stock fan is the same as the
Ninja 3's.